My World in a Bulb

This is one of those lessons that I just didn't get around to posting.  These may or may not have been completed by my 5th graders in May---BUT they're too good not to share.

In this lesson we looked at the art style of surrealism.  Of course we looked at the work of Magritte and Dali.  If your school has a BrainPop subscription, they have an awesome presentation for both elementary and middle school students. 

This lesson was quite simple, yet it really got the students to think.  I ran across this image online that inspired these surrealist bulbs!

  I also gave the students a couple handouts to get their ideas a-brewing.  The target here was to create a surrealist type world, event, or scenario inside their lightbulb.

This lesson cut it pretty close to the end of the school year so most students chose to fill in their background with a little watercolor and salt technique--definitely can't go wrong there!  

Surrealism Dreams

We spent the first part of summer school talking all about Surrealism and dreams.  We watched a Brain Pop Video on Surrealism, read about Surrealism, Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali in this Scholastic Arts magazine.  After we had learned all about surrealism and how it can relate to dreams, students were given this prompt to write about "What's the strangest dream you have ever had?"  After spending some time writing  students created a self-portrait with their surreal dream serving as the background.  Students spent a lot of time translating their words to imagery, mixing colors, and using new watercolor techniques.  The inspiration for this lesson came from here.  I was in awe of the work these students did and wanted to at least try out a portion of this lesson.  

Teacher Example

Student's who finished early came up with a title for their artwork that correlated between their dream and painting.